iPhone vs. The Misfire Phone

I know a thing or two about names. Once the neighborhood kids started calling me Bambi I was stuck with that childish monicker for life.

Apple’s success with the iMac, iPod, iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto made it difficult, despite some legal wrangling with Cisco, to choose any other name besides iPhone. It stuck. It’s an iEverthing iDevice world at Apple. But iDigress. What about Amazon’s new smartphone? How’s it doing?

The Misfire Phone

Don’t ask me where I first read about it, but someone decided to call Amazon’s faltering Fire Phone the Misfire phone. That’s just perfect.

Why? Why not? Some estimates say Amazon’s Fire Phone, rather, the Misfire, has sold tens of thousands instead of hundreds or thousands or even a million.

What’s the problem?

Here’s where Apple’s approach to creating the iPhone varies substantially from Amazon’s attempts to be technologically savvy.

Apple builds products that they themselves want to use, so the designs are solid and durable, and the entire ecosystem is built around a large selection of applications and seamless integration with other devices.

How does that compare to the Misfire Phone?

Price wise, Misfire Phone isn’t cheap, and the hardware and software differentiators are designed for Amazon’s benefit, not the customer. Unless you log into Amazon every few days to shop and order online.

The 3D effect maps and multiple cameras seem acceptable, but Misfire Phone doesn’t even run Google Play Store apps, the way even cheaper Android-based smartphones can.

A friend of mine bought an Amazon Misfire Phone recently and ran into a bad case of buyer’s remorse almost immediately. Why? Yes, it’s a phone, but not particularly smart, and Misfire Phone’s raison d’être is simple– it tries to sell you products from Amazon.

Remember the Facebook Home phone? Some said Apple was doomed because Facebook has more users than Apple has iPhone customers. It was really just a cheap Android OS smartphone with a Facebook layer on top. How’d that work out for anyone? Not so well and for about the same reasons as Amazon’s Misfire Phone is misfiring with anemic sales. Facebook Home was all about a Facebook centric experience.

That might be OK for a few people, but most of us don’t live in Facebook 24/7, don’t want it shoved in our faces all day and night, and have other things to do. Like figure out how to avoid Facebook Fatigue (apparently it’s a real disease).

Word has already spread throughout the land that you’ll catch a bad case of Amazon Fatigue™ if you fork over money for a Misfire Phone. I Googled ‘Amazon Fatigue’ and didn’t get a hit that describes the malady so my trademark probably is the first. Hey, at least I didn’t name the disease after me.

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About Bambi Brannan

I work in public relations in San Francisco, California. I truly love my Mac, my iPhone, my husband, both of my pet fish, high heels, dinner out, and chocolate. Not always in that order, of course. Read more of my articles here.

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I’ve read that Bezos, with his Steve Jobs/Apple envy, thinks he’s a product guy. But he’s not a product guy. This proves that.

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